ATI Catalyst 5.9 Performance Analysis

Yesterday ATI released their latest Catalyst driver for users of Radeon graphics cards. The new driver promises plenty of bug fixes but what about performance? Read on as we take a look at the new Catalyst 5.9 drivers compared against the pervious version to see if it's worth upgrading from a performance prospective. We'll be comparing the drivers on a Radeon X550, X700 and X850XT.

As we come to the end of another month we see another Catalyst release make its way to our inbox from ATI. As always we will do our normal comparison of the latest release to the previous - in this case the 5.8.

Sapphire Technology RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition

We have made some changes to our test system (for instance, X300 ditched and replaced with X550) but we will have a close look at that in just a minute. For now let's have a quick look at what the latest drivers bring as far as performance and fixes go.

Release notes from ATI

From ATI:

Issues Resolved in Catalyst Software Suite 5.9

Battlefield 2: The game no longer exits to the Windows desktop after the game logo is displayed

Endorphin: Running the application under Windows XP no longer results in hesitation being noticed during simulation or playback

Max Payne 2: Erratic mouse pointer behavior is no longer noticed within the game's menu after a short time period of game play

MU: Opening a chat window and playing the on-line game no longer results in Hesitation being noticed when pressing the Enter key

Silent Hunter 3: Enabling all video options within the game and setting the particle density to 100, along with setting Anti-Aliasing to 6X and Anisotropic Filtering to 16x, no longer results in display corruption on the left portion of the display

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: Running the Dantoonie level of the game no longer results in hesitation being noticed

Terminator 3: The game no longer fails to respond and a VPU Recover message no longer occur after loading the game character

The Catalyst Control Center no longer displays blank pages when quickly exiting and re-launching the Catalyst Control Center while hot-plugging or hot-unplugging a CRT display device

Installing an All-in-Wonder into a system containing an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series and an ATI Theater 550 Pro no longer results in loss of signal error message when setting the country region to Sweden

HDTV support may still be displayed within the control panel with ATI products that do not support HDTV

Connecting two display devices using the DVI and CRT connectors on a system containing an ATI Xpress 200 results in the system failing to resume when entering standby state

Catalyst Control Center: The Overdrive Automated Clock Configuration Utility may continue running even after the user selects apply or cancel in the utility's confirmation window

Connecting two display devices using the DVI and CRT connectors on a system containing an ATI Xpress 200 no longer results in the system failing to resume when entering standby state. Further details can be found in topic number 737-19538

Catalyst Control Center: Connecting a TV as the only display device to an ATI Radeon X300/X600 series no longer results in the Signal Format found in the Adjustment page of the TV Properties being labeled as Unknown

Three of the four ATI entries found in the Add or Remove Programs for Windows XP Japanese version, are no longer displayed in English

The Catalyst Control Center shortcut is now removed when selecting to uninstall the ATI software driver

Catalyst Control Center: The Overscan slider bar now displays a Minimum, Medium and Maximum setting for All-in-Wonder SCART boards

WDM version numbers are no longer documented in the Information Center of the Catalyst Control Center for ATI products that do not support WDM drivers

An intermittent error message is no longer experienced when selecting all of the aspects within the Catalyst Control Center quickly

The limited account user no longer has the ability to add a short cut for the profile manager in the system tray

Overdrive settings no longer revert back to the default setting when connecting a secondary display device and enabling extended desktop mode

Moving the slide bar found in the Adjustments aspect of the Catalyst Control Center are now restored to their pervious levels when clicking the discard button

A horizontal shifting issue when using the capture application is now resolved

Changes to the audio settings are now retained after a system reboot when using the ATI Theater 550 Pro

Resuming from suspend mode no longer results in the audio level returning to its default value

Poor quality of static texture and scrolling text when watching live TV on system containing an ATI All-in-Wonder X800 series product is no longer noticeable

Catalyst Control Center: The hot-key list is now dynamically populated to reflect the enable/disable status

The Use Manual Detection Only translation for traditional Chinese is now correct

The Overscan/Underscan option found in the Catalyst Control Center has now been translated properly for the Russian language

The ability to navigate within the Catalyst Control Center while a confirmation dialog box for the Catalyst Control Center is displayed is no longer possible

The Apply button is now available when making a change to 3D aspect page in the Catalyst Control Center

Intermittent launch failures of the Catalyst Control Center is now resolved

Connecting two display devices to the Radeon X700 using the DVI and CRT connectors no longer results in display corruption being noticed when booting Windows XP

Connecting an HDTV and a CRT display device followed by disabling the CRT and rebooting the system no longer results in the HDTV failing to display an image and the CRT becoming active again

HDTV support no longer fails to be detected properly after connecting a CRT and TV to the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series

Display corruption is no longer noticed on the secondary display device when disabling extended desktop mode

Setting Anti-Aliasing to 4x in the Catalyst Control Center no longer results in a blank window or an error message being displayed when launching Java plug in

Hesitation is no longer noticed during the opening cinematic of Madagascar when rotating the display device by 180 degrees

Display corruption is no longer noticed when running the Codecreatures benchmark when the FrameBuffer is set to 64MB on system containing an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series

An extraordinarily long delay is no longer noticed when resuming from an S3 state

Overlay corruption is no longer noticed when turning off the primary display device in systems containing an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series

The display resolution options of 800x600 and 640x480 mode are no longer available within the Display Manager aspect after rotating a desktop that is rotated by 90 or 270 degree

Running 3D billboard under XP and having the application window display on the left side of the primary display, no longer results in the 3D screen image staying on the left side when dragging the application to the right side of the display device

A black screen image is no longer displayed when entering a full screen DOS prompt when using an ATI Radeon 9800 XT under Windows XP

The Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system no longer prompts the user for confirmation of the un-install of ATI Parental Control when running the ATI un-attended un-install

Entering standby mode under the Windows XP operating system no longer results in display corruption being noticed or the operating system failing to respond

Display corruption when using the TV-Out composite setting has now been resolved for the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series

Video corruption is no longer noticed when playing a DVD under Windows XP MCE

Live TV no longer appears choppy when using and ATI Radeon X300 and two ATI Theater 550 Pro tuner cards and outputting to PiP in PowerCinema

Video jitter is no longer noticed when playing back video using overlay with DXVA

The German language control panel text no longer appears truncated when using 96 DPI

Again this month ATI has included a ton of bug fixes so it would be wise to upgrade your drivers without even seeing the performance numbers yet.